lo GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF NEW JERSEY. 



against too rapid discharge in ordinary floods. The beneficial 

 effects are sufficient to call for some restriction upon further 

 and extensive clearing. 



EDUCATIONAL AND .^THETICAL ELEMENTS. 



The preservation of some of the forests for the purposes of 

 education is of public importance. To the student of botany 

 the woodland must always be the place for earnest work and 

 full of fruitful suggestions and valuable facts. There trees, 

 shrubs and herbaceous plants are found in their native habitat^ 

 and their relations to one another are there studied to the best 

 advantage. The clearing of all the country around our large 

 towns and cities makes it necessary now to go far afield to study 

 the flora of the natural woods. The reservation of tracts of 

 woodland in easily accessible locations will help to counteract 

 the losses due to so wide clearing of the forest, and will make 

 it possible for the scholars of city schools to study how plants 

 and trees grow in their native woods. The text-book cannot 

 take the place of living forms. The woods should be kept as 

 nature's arboreta for the benefit of the schools. 



The preservation of typical species of the plant-world and 

 also of those which are characteristic of any locality or district, 

 as the mountain tops, the sheltered valleys of the Highlands, 

 and the swamps and sandy plains in Southern New Jersey, calls 

 for the preservation of some of the forests. Extensive clearing 

 threatens to exterminate some of the more rare and more inter- 

 esting species and to break up the grouping of forms as they are 

 now to be seen in these wild conditions of the forest. It would 

 be a public misfortune to lose any of our characteristic species 

 or their natural grouping, as now existing, or to have our rich 

 botanical heritage marred by general deforestation of the State. 



The woodlands afford homes to our characteristic animals. 

 They are great natural preserves where the mammals, birds and 

 other forms native in the State are found. The clearing of the 

 timber means the extinction or disappearance of some of our 

 wilder species from the State. The protection of our fauna is 

 bound up with the preservation of the forests, and the student 

 of natural history is deeply interested in this protection. The 



